So I read an article about how SEO is going to change majorly depending on location of people that are searching, etc... Saying that number of links could become obsolete to some extent... any comments on that?
It is going to be quite a while before seo changes that drastically. Google simply does not have a better way to rank websites other than factors like links. It will just change so that geotargeting factors will give a website boosts for certain queries from certain locations. Google knows that many websites still have a national or international appeal. So it's not like any well established site will just disappear due to geotargeting. Despite what Google does, there will still be other search engines who do care about links.
I think google has tried to distinguish international site and geo-targeting site. In most cases the search results from google.com.tw will be different from google.co.uk. Of course it will also be different from google.com
I also don't believe that geotargeting will be the death of SEO. Even if some websites will get a boost, location will only be a "factor" in ranking that website for that specific query and that specific visitor (i'm pretty sure that "factor" already exists). However, let's now forget that most traffic comes from US and you can set your website's target to US from Google Webmasters Tools control panel. Equally if you want to target UK traffic you can set it up in Webmasters Tools.
SEO has been there and will be there as long as Google has an algorithm. it will however be harder and harder to manipulate SERP rankings in the future. Google will be focusing more and more on quality sites, define neighbourhood which they are already doing, and yes, number of links is already obsolte as it is the quality of links now and not the quantity.
Geo targeting is already in full swing. If I go to google.com.au and search for hosting, showing results from around the globe, the top ten listings are for Australian hosting companies. Geo targeting may become more prevalent however only in select niches where location is important
there might be a different in terms of location by there is always a chances that there is a small similar result from international and location site.
As per my search I have seen many international sites ranking well in one location whereas bad in other locations. But when i tried to search in .com then most of the results are similar in both countries. Not exactly sure for this but have find such cases for websites.